Alright its exam time here incase you hadn’t noticed and I am a crazy procrastibaker. Now this trait is something my housemates love, (who wouldn’t want to come home to chocolate-chip cookies?) but its a real issue for getting things accomplished. So this semester I thought I’d be proactive.

On Monday night I baked my little heart out. I made a huge curry two quiches and a pear tart with a crumble base. The Idea was that if I set my self up with food for the week I can study and not get distracted by cooking breaks. I will let you know how it goes but here are a few pics of what the night produced.

(the cookbook shelf of inspiration, reading cook books is one of my favourite study breaks!)

(the beginnings of dessert and quiches)

(caramelised red onion and sweet potato stage one of quiche complete)

(added a whole lot of spinach and feta and it was super delish when all baked up)

next it was dessert time and this was so yum I’m going to share the recipe with you.

(this was super delicious, really sweet but the rosemary gave it a woody feel mmmmm)

lightly melt the butter (do not burn or boil it just get it a bit soft so it will coat everything nicely) and add vanilla essence to butter, stir through.

Then add your wet to dry mix and combine

pour mix into a pie tin with baking paper. with your hands push the batter down flat and so it covers the whole base. it should look like one giant oatmeal cookie. blind bake the crust for 30 minutes (please note my oven takes a much longer to bake things than what recipes usually say so check at 15 minutes what you want is a golden crisp base, remember it will firm up when it cools)

remove and allow to cool slightly

core and chop the pears. toss them in lemon juice and brown sugar and arrange on top of crumble base,

add sprigs of rosemary and put back in the oven for 15 minutes to cook the pears.

When life is just a bit too hard and you need to think of paradise to get through it.

Well I think of a holiday we went on last April to Koh Samui, Thailand. I have definitely been to other parts of Thailand and other countries that I found more picturesque and enjoyed more, (the main part of Koh Samui was far from the beautiful, still pictures posted here), but this trip was so special. Just the perfect combination of the right moment and right company. We squeezed in a 10 day trip to celebrate a worthy cause …. some new found freedom 🙂

Just thought I would share with you some of the images that bring back the most amazing memories and instantly sooth me when I’m feeling a bit frazzled.

I have been trying to make an effort to cook my meat eating boyfriend some dinners that were less lentil and cous cous based more man food. He was going through a rough patch and food is how I try to spoil people so we are chickpea free for a short window of time.

However slow cooking lamb for 3 hours makes him happy but doesn’t do much for his vegitarian girlfriend!This is where the glorious Joy the Baker came in. first of all she is hilarious and I blame her hilarity for all the time I spend not studying and browsing her blog. She also makes these mean hearty veg meals that could be mistaken for manly meat dishes. So I took a leaf out of her book and made this http://joythebaker.com/2011/11/caramelized-mushrooms-and-dumplings/.

wow just wow!

It was great it had biscuits (savoury scones type of deal) which I am a big fan of since having had them at North American thanksgiving dinners. Now these delicious chive biscuits got put on a stew and made the yummiest meal. Tom and I went back for unecessary seconds until our stomachs were unbareably full.

Now we started with the biscuits. I knew that if I started this meal when I got home form yoga at 6 we wouldn’t be eating until 9. So this was started early in the morning and sat waiting in the fridge till I got home.

Once I was home I got to work on the stew with sweet potatoes, carrots, caramelised red onions, rosemary and gravy and it started to look like this…(see above link for Joy’s recipe)

In the oven it went. Mine took longer than joy said, about 35 minutes but it was well worth the wait